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The Agency: Inside the CIA (2010)
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[music plays] It is one the most secretive organizations on the planet unjustified interference in the internal affairs of other nations. Atomic bomb has been successfully detonated. Their budget is secret, as is their roster. This means that we must have knowledge of military forces and preparations around the world. It is a covert organization in a country that prides itself on transparency. There are certain things that should remain secret for very good diplomatic and other reasons. The CIA had a role in qin the overthrow of an elective government. A small undoing of those human rights. ... to send a new signal of openness to the world by t tring down that wall. And now it is faced with a new enemy, more dangerous than ever before. It's the biggest spy exchange since the Cold War. He described his abduction as a total failure for the U.S. We are the largest, most capable intelligence enterprise on the planet. It is the Central Intelligence Agency. [music plays] Ten people were arrested in Boston and Northern Virginia, accused of being part of a Russian spy ring. Almost two decades since the Cold War had finished, here was a stark reminder that perhaps it had never ended. The spies had blended into American life for years, The Russian government was prepared for upwards of ten years to mount these operations, put these people into American society, and run them. Have secret communications with them, have them in contact with Russian intelligence officers in the Russian Mission of the UN over this extended period of time. What was fascinating to professional intelligence officers was we'd never seen a network like this. Now, the public looks at this and says, Because none of them were trying to get into the government, none of them had clearances, they were just entering American society. I think we should look at them as talent scouts, as spotters. In other words, they were moving into circles of interest. Financial circles, political circles, and so forth. Are we going back to the Cold War? We shouldn't think of it as Cold War. The Cold War sort of officiallylynded when the Soviet Union dissolved itself, but Russian espipiage efforts have never ended. Only 12 days after their arrests and subsequent convictions, the spy ring was gone, traded to Russia in a prisoner exchange. As part of the swap, ten people pleaded guilty and were subsequently deported. Among them is Igor Sutyagin, jailed since 1999 for passing military information to the CIA, a charge he's continued to d dy. The incident was a reminder of our need for this covert world, run by agencies like the CIA. Of course, spying isn't a new invention. It's been with us for quite a while. Espionage, or spying, uh, is, really is as... as old as recorded history, and certainly before that. I mean, I have to believe the first caveman who saw the guy down the road getting better nuts and berries than he did, climbed a tree to find out where he was going. That's espionage. But for t t US, prior to World War II, the idea of intelligence gathering was considered less than appealing. This was a time when espionage was still very new to thehemerican vocabulary. America, by that time in our history, I think, felt that espionage was somehow un-American. State Department tried to start, uh, it's own cryptography center, "The Black Chamber," and the famous quote from the then-secretary of state, Henry Stimson, was that, you know, And he shut it down. Uh, and then, with the outbreak of, uh, of World War II, and the bombing of Pearl Harbor, it was immediately recognized that we needed this capability. In other words, Pearl Harbor, on December 7th, 1941, was a surprise attack. It was all done with intelligence. They had the spies in Pearl Harbor, uh, that were, you know, taking photographs and communicating back to Tokyo. The attack was intended to cripple the United States' ability to wage war before the war in the Pacific had even begun. A total of 353 Japanese aircraft were launched from six aircraft carriers in the morning of December 7th, 1941, inflicting massive damage. The US populace, until the point, was unconvinced that war was necessary. The attacks sparkedd. a massive mobilization of all the weapons required to wage war, inclcling spies. There was uh, after Pearl Harbor in the... in the whole intelligence community. ...the direct predecessor to the CIA, under the leadership of Donovan is today remembered as But in those days, intelligence gathering was anything but organized. America, I think, has a, sort of a long history of espionage, rerely dating back to the Revolutionary War, that we seemed to have forgotten, time and time again. We have this sort of schizophrenic relationship with intelligence where, when we need it, we have it, and when we don't need it, we don't have it. So, um, we didn't have it. I mean, essentially there... there was no centralized intelligence service, uh, when World War II broke out, there were sort of individual government agencies doing what you might describe whether it was the office of... ...but it was done on sort of a very, uh, informal ad hoc and not terribly professional way. Donovan realized that if America was going to win the war, it needed to have a centralized intelligence organization that could react quickly and preemptively to threats. And I think he also understood that America lacked this capability, and that World War II was gonna be a different kinin of war. It was gonna really require uh conventional warfare, which is really what OSS engaged in. The drive for an American brand of espionage came right from the top. It wouldn't have been created without, uh, Franklin Roosevelt. Um, who really, I think, understood the threat that Nazi Germany posed to the United States, even though many in... in the United States didn't feel that way. And although he and General Donovan were polls apart politically, Roosevelt, of course, being a Liberal Democrat, and Donovan being a very Conservative Republican, they shared this uncommon view. The v vw was simple. The OSS would be a new type of organization, one that could inflict damage behind enemy lines. OSS was the wartime intelligence arm of the US government, the covert intelligence arm, uh, responsible both for collecting intelligence, carrying out sabotage, behind the lines operations, and so forth. It was then tasked to Donovan to recruit members to make up this new American spy unit. General Donovan, him... once, once said himself that the major part of the success of OSS was the result of good old-fashioned intellectual sweat. So they, he really sought out the greatest intellectuals of the day. The popular conception is that it was sort of exclusively the domain of, uh, Skull and Bones and aristocratic types, and people often said that OSS stood for "Oh So Social" because so many blue bloods joined it. And... and the reason for that was, uh, fairly obvious, you know. These are people who are well-connected all around the world, they were well educated. Uh, they spoke foreign languages, and they knew people, and if you're looking in the intelligence business for people that know people, that would be a natural constituency. But you know, they... they recruited from Hollywood. John Ford was the head of the, uh, OSS field photographic unit. Uh, Sterling Hayden, the actor, who was a marine, served in the OSS. Uh, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. They recruited writers, artists, really recruited from every part of, uh, American society and culture. With this new breed of warriors, Donovan was determined to make a splash. The OSS would drop behind enemy lines, recruiting resistance fighters, and causing massive disruptions of troop movements, sometimes with Donovan himself leading the way. Somebody once said that i ithe Germans wanna know where the next invasion was gonna take place, they should follow General Donovan, 'cause he, he was always there, you know? He was at the front. Even went behind enemy lines on more than one occasion during the war. So, imagine you're an OSS guy somewhere and you're risking your life behind enemy lines, and General Donovan shows up, you know? Well, if he's willing to risk his life, obviously you're willing to risk yours. So, he led by example, and I think that made a huge difference. Under Donovan's leadership, the OSS flourished, but the major test of World War II espionage was still to come. The OSS may have been the direct predecessor to the Central Intelligence AgAgcy, bubuit was the British that were considered the spymasters on the eve of World War II. The British are the masters of intelligence, and always have been, Bill Donovan, who had been head of OSS, learned a lot from the British about their organization, how they went after conducting intelligence. After some hesitation, British intelligence began training and coordinating with their American counterparts. The British were renowned for careful and highly-detailed planning of operations. The OSS, on the other hand, took a different approach. You know, General Donovan was famous for telling OSS personnel that you couldn't succeed without taking chances. He described it as calculated recklessness. The OSS I Inched far-reaching raids on Gerern forces, even parachuting directly into Germany at one point. This calculated recklessness made the Germans take notice, and America intelligence began to blossom in advance of the invasion of Europe. Allied intelligence had deceived the German defenders in France that invasion forces were preparing to attack the Port of Calais, a target many miles to the east from their intended landing site of Normandy. There were a number of contributions of intelligence to deceiving the Germans as to where we would land when we invaded Europe. The largest amphibious invasion in the history of the world was about to take place, and intelligence services were working around the clock Intelligence turned the tide of the war. Right in that one battle. As Allied soldiers began pouring ashore at Normandy, the German reserve forces remained at Calais, waiting to prevent an invasion... an invasion straight from the minds of Allied intelligence officers. After the landing, small teams of OSS operational units moved in. And these were 15 to 30 men teams sent in to Europe to work behind enemy lines with resistance groups, and these were forerunners of today's US Special Forces. Donovan's OSS operational groups were successful because he picked its members very carefully. What he did is he went out and he found recent immigrants from these countries. From Italy, from Greece, from France, from all over Europe, who knew the country, spoke the language, and could easily meld right back in by going back. [music plays] They blew up bridges, cut telegraph wires, and attacked enemy supply depots, in order to clear the advance towards Nazi Germany. But these weren't the only type of operations the OSS engaged in. Engaged in morale operations, uh, which today are termed psychological operations. Uh, the maritime unit did a lot of really, um, incredible things. This was the branch that, uh, trained people to go in and put mines on ships, and go in and advance an invasion by swimming, using boats, stuff that had never been done before. By the end of World War II, William Jay Donovan's band of warriors had grown to: But, the OSS's days were numbered. Really, it was Roosevelt's death that I think, uh, thatateant the death of the OSS, 'cause he'd been its greatest benefactor. He'd protected it from all its political enemies, at the Pentagon, at the FBI. Uh, Truman and Donovan didn't get along well, um. So as soon as Roosevelt died, um, the OSS was disbanded October 1st of 1945. Another reason for the dissolution of the OSS came from post-war optimism for the future. After, uh, after the war, we kind of felt that, uh, World War II is over, and everybody took a deep breath "That's it, no more wars. " It was an end of an organization that laid the framework for the CIA. And a historian who, uh, works for the Intelligence Community said to me, "You know, it's amazing, whenever I look at any aspect of the intelligence community today," he said, "It's amazing to me how much of it started with OSS." But even decades after Donovan's organization was disbanded, there is still a constant reminder of its legacy at: You walk into CIA Headquarters, the first thing you see is General Donovan's statue. I mean, there's an OSS memorial there, so the CIA understands that really everything it does goes back to the OSS. We had no intelligence service. Over the space of three and a half years, weweet up a global intelligence organization. It's really remarkable what they did. Only two years passed before the CIA was formed, in part to combat a new threat. The National Security Act of 1947 created the CIA. The leadership of the country realized, uh, that we were then in the incipient stages of the Cold War. We would need some... mechanism to collect intelligence on a national level. We could streamline and centralize the intelligence that various military services and others collect. Hence the name "Central Intelligence Agency. " In a sense, it was, it was developed so there would, quote, "Be no more Pearl Harbors. " This new CIA didn't have to wait long until their first challenges arrived. The Soviet Union, or USSR, had liberated half of Europe from Axis control before they stopped at Berlin. The only problem? They didn't leave. With a new adversary, barely two years after the greatest war in history, this new agency would have to be successful and be able to adapt quickly. Many wondered if another war was on the horizon. One thing was certain. In this new rising conflict, the men and d men of the Central Intelligence Agency would be the frontline. As the shellshock of World War II began to fade, global leaders met at a series of conferences to discuss the future of war-ravaged Europe. Russia would control, or the Soviet Union would control, uh, Central and... and Eastern Europe. So that led to the situation where Russia actually, uh, assimilated the Baltic States as part of Russia, and then, they caused a, uh, other, what they called, satellite nations, Czechoslovakia, Poland, East Germany, uh, Hungarar Romania, and so forth. They put their puppet regimes into those countries where technically they weren't part of Russia, but in... as a matter of fact, uh, Moscow controlled all of them. The Allies had learned a hard lesson from World War I and sought to handle post-war Germany differently this time. The US and the Allies, uh, instituted: ...in order to try rehabilitate, uh, the countries in... in Western Europe, as contrasted to... to the post-World War I approach, where the Iron Fist literally put Germany and others in a position that... well, they had greatatifficulty in recovering. After World War II, the idea was to aid a recovery. The Soviet Union, on the other hand, had a different idea. Russians in Eastern Europe were pulling out whatever they could from the Eastern European nations. As the Soviets began to mine Europe for resources, lines were drawn across Berlin, now the epicenter of the Cold War. Berlin was the... the center of so many intelligence activities, that, uh, it was incredible. There was agents all over the place in Berlin, and a lot of double agents and maybe triple agents and so forth. It was probably the golden age of, uh, clandestine operations in, uh, Berlin. Well, Berlin was an interesting venue during the Cold War, of the Soviet Union and its intelligence services, Berlin became a divided city. It was divided between the British, the French, American, and Russian sectors, but eventually, East Germany and West Germany. But this new line dividing East and West Germany, guarded by scattered checkpoints, did little to stop the flololo of people leaving the communist-controlled territories to the east. It didn't take long for those under communism to understand that that was not the way to go and... and the flow of people uh, from East Berlin in the east, into West Berlin, uh, was such that the Soviets could no longer, uh, stand that. So they built the Berlin Wall. Homes were destroyed, and entire city blocks walled down the middle as Berlin quickly became a militarized fortress. The city slowly dissolved into chaos as families were separated and rioting escalated. [music plays] As Berlilibecame a police state, intelligence officers scrambled to secure Nazi scientists with valuable information and skills. There was something of a race for those scientists in Germany, particularly those who had worked on the... on the missile program there. The German V-2 Missile Program created the world's first long-range combat ballistic missile. Over 3,000 of these weapons were launched against Allied targets during the war. The Allies had seen the effects of these weapons, and knew that to secure the missile technology would prove a powerful deterrent against the Soviet Union. Of course, it didn't take much imagination to foresee what type of weapon could be carried on a V-2 rocket. [music plays] German scientists became instrumental in the creation of atomic weaponry on both sides of the so-called "Iron Curtain," the imaginary line dividing the east from the west. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki essentially ended World War II, but it also created a dangerous technology gap between the Soviet Union and the United States. It wasn't long, however, until the Soviet Union would narrow the gap with the help of the Soviet Intelligence Agency working in the United States, The Soviets had their spies collecting intelligence on the atomic bomb. Joseph Stalin, head of the Soviet Union, knew about the American atomic bomb in detail, even before President Harry Truman knew about the atomic bomb The Soviet Union's nuclear program moved ahead quickly with the help of spies in the US, and there was soon a neck-and-neck arms race. Russia had a long history with spying, and the KGB traced its roots to the Russian Revolution of 1917. They, early on, formed a very active... intelligence capability against their own people. When the Bolshevik Revolution took place in 1917, and, uh, Lenin took over, communism took over, the Sov... Russia, and converted it into the Soviet Union, the first thing that he did was he pulled together an intelligence service. They were the key to his controlling the Soviet Union and its people. They were the first modern state to begin practicing terrorism against their own people. Uh, to suppress dissent, uh, to unru... uproot dissidence, anybody who seemed inimical to the regime, that early intelligence capability, used against their own people, and against out... outsiders, took on different names. The NKVD, the OGPU, and so forth, up through our time, when it was the KGB. And with the help of the KGB, much of American society had been infiltrated at the end of the war. And during that period, the Soviet Union, through the KGB and working in part through the Communist party, had developed, we know, at least around 250 recruited American secret sources in this country. uh, Hollywood people in there, uh, media, uh, they had people in the White House, in the Treasury, and so forth. They had infiltrated every branch of the US government during World War II. They had two spies in the White House sitting beside President Roosevelt. How many sources did we have Moscow in the Soviet Union? And the answer is a big fat zero. KGB agents had placed themselves in positions of power in nearly every major department of the US government by the start of the Cold War, and things were heating up. But the agency was about to make the biggest mistake of its history. People, uh, a aund the world, remember the Bay of Pigs, if they... they don't remember anything else. It was said to be a CIA disaster. The Cold War had spread across the planet. Britain, France, the United States, Canada, and eight other countries formed NATO, as states picked sides in a cold war that was gradually heating up. The Korean War had been fought at the urging of Joseph Stalin, and a ceasefire was only signed following his death. The entire conflict had continued to escalate with then-President Eisenhower ordering the CIA to launch an invasion of Cuba with the aim of overthrowing Fidel Castro. Castro had aligned himself with the Soviet Union, and the US wasn't about to let a communist country flourish only 90 miles off the coast of Florida. The CIA's invasion of Cuba would become known as the Bay of Pigs. People, uh, around the world remember the Bay of Pigs, uh, if they... they don't remember anything else. It was said to be a CIA disaster. It was another operation to stymie and stop the expansion of communism around the world. The United States had realized that the only way to maintain its security and to halt the spread of communism, was to use economic, diplomatic, and military measures to halt its spread. This policy was named "containment," and a small bay in Western Cuba would become its latest battle. It was planned der Eisenhower, and approved under Eisenhower, with the following stipulation. The US military would back up the CIA. Then with the changing of administrations, the plans began to shift. Kennedy came into office for the implememtation of the operation, and he proceeded to change the entire plan at the White House. They moved it from the original location to the Bay of Pigs. The word came back from the Kennedy Administration that the military support that had been promised by Eisenhower was no longer an option. Even with this lack Allen Dulles, then-director of CIA, and another agent, Dick Bissel, went ahead with the plan. Dick Bissel and Allen Dulles at the CIA believed they could force Kennedy to change his mind, and if the operation began to fail, he would really go in to save it. The CIA put together a large bunch of Cuban exiles, anti-Castro exiles, and then trained 'em in, uh, South America. Word leaked out as... as it always does, there's no secrets in Washington, ever, anywhere, anytime. KGB officererworking Cuba and communist spies within the Cuban community had warned on multiple occasions that the United States was planning an invasion. Back in the Soviet Union, Radio Moscow broadcasted a prediction of the invasion four days before the landing occurred. Despite the lack of air cover, the lack of surprise, and an overwhelming Cuban army presence, the invasion took place. Landing craft carrying Cuban exiles and CIA operations officers landed in the bay and initially met with little resistance. Militia near the bay warned Castro that landing craft were approaching and 35000 trained Cuban soldiers were dispatched to engage the CIA paramilitary force of less than 2000. There was some air cover to protect the paramilitary force, but it was not enough. There were a couple of CIA airplanes, you know, covert airplanes to support the landing, but there was no US Navy jets. Withoho overwhelming air superiority, the CIA planes were shot down one by one. As the situation on the beach dissolved, the United States ambassador to the UN, Adlai Stevenson, issued a denial of the entire invasion, even as Cuban forces were capturing American weaponry from the beaches. United States has committed no aggression against Cuba and no offensive has been launched from Florida or from any other part of the United States. The Cuban Air Force pounded the beach as the paramilitary forces retreated in the face of overwhelming opposition. It was over in 72 hours. The White House tried to play intelligence officer. They thought they knew better. Kennedy's made the first mistake, the CIA made the second. They chose to go ahead. Fidel Castro rounded up the remaining survivors and they were driven to camps across Cuba. Several CIA officers and Cuban exiles were executed by Castro in the aftermath of the largest CIA failure in history. In November 1961, CIA inspector general authored a report on the invasion that remained classified top-secret until 1996. In the report, he outlined reasons for the failure of the operations. Among others, it also cited CIA should never have gone ahead. If they wanted to change Kennedy's mind, they should have said, "We won't do it. "We can't do it without... Navy support. " That disaster, uh, has... has plagued the CIA and its history since those early days. That's the way it goes in, uh, in the intelligence business. You want your successes to be secret, and you like your failures to be that way, too, but in this country, in the US, media's watching, the Congress is watching, uh, uh, you'll be plagued, uh, that's why you got to be successful. But I can assure you there've been more successes than failures, and when they count, they've succeeded. But it was only a year later when the agency would face its greatest test yet. Analysts were examining photos of tiny cylinders laying in fields in Cuba. It was becoming clear that they were Sovietetuclear missiles. We had no idea how dangerous and how close we came to a nuclear holocaust. [music plays] In the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs invasion, relations remained uneasy with the Soviet Union and the US, but the Soviets were about to make a move that would bring the world closer to nuclear conflict than ever before. There were indications that the Russians were up to something, but we d dn't know what it was. It turned out that a... a French military ououof shape, in Havana, Cuba, had heard from s seone, oh, he overheard a conversation that the Russians were sneaking missiles, nuclear weapons into Cuba. He came to Washington and he told the head of the CIA, and the gov... US government what he had heard. Because of that, the US began to fly U-2 airplanes around Cuba, but not over Cuba, to see if they could spot anything unusual. October 14th, 1962. A U-2 Photo Reconnaissance plane captured disturbing images from the island of Cuba. The following day, a CIA analyst spent hours poring over pictures of miles of Cuban terrain. The photos were then compared with information stolen from Soviet military intelligence. The results were grim. They are, in fact, installing missiles, nuclear weapons in Cuba. They were confirmed as SS-4 intermediate range missiles with the capability of hitting the US continent as far west as Dallas, Texas and as far north as Washington, DC. But the second flight, to get more information, named, uh, Rudy Anderson. And his plane was shot down. Well, that got our attention. In the morning of October 18th, CIA aerial photography expert Arthur C. Lundahl met with President Kennedy in the Oval Office. Lundahl told Kennedy that the Soviet Union was erecting missile bases in Cuba. Kennedy then went public. Within the past week, unmistakable evidence has established the fact that a series of offensive missile sites is now in preparation on that imprisoned island. The purpose of these bases can be none other than to provide a nuclear strike capapility against the western hemisphere. President Kennedy then delivered a swift message to Soviet Premier Khrushchev. "You shoot down another airplane, or even attempt to do it, you're finished. We will, we will wipe out all of your missiles and crews in Cuba. We'll bomb them. " At 6:30 on October 18th, Kennedy met with the National Security Council in a committee named: With the advice of Excomm, Kennedy ordered a full naval quarantine of Cuba in an effort to stem the flow of Soviet weapons into the country. Khrushchev wrote a letter to Kennedy condemning the action and said the quarantine constitutes an act of aggression, propelling mankind into the abyss of a world nuclear missile war. This urgent transformation of Cuba into an important strategic base by the presence of these large, long-range, and clearly offensive weapons of sudden mass destruction, constitutes an explicit threat to the peace and security of all the Americas. Our unswerving objective, therefore, must be to prevent the use of these missiles against this or any other country, and to secure their withdrawal or elimination. The massive military buildup around the island of Cuba continued as the Soviet Union refused to back down. But the CIA was one step ahead. The CIA had an ace up its sleeve. The CIA had a spy inside the Soviet Union, Colonel Oleg Penkovsky, who was a Soviet intelligence colonel that had access to all of their missile technology. And that's how we knew that we were 13 days away from those missiles being ready to be launched against the United Statete Khrushchev had no choice but to agree to remove his missiles because he knew and we knew we still had the Soviet Union ououunned. The US had nuclear military superiority. President Kennedy wawaable to say, "You take those missiles out, or we will take 'em out. " That meant that Khrushchev had no choice but to yield, back down, and move 'em out. He struck a deal. After some negotiation, the Soviet Union agreed to withdraw. However, in trade, Khrushchev demanded that Kennedy would remove his missile launchers from Turkey and Italy. And Kennedy said, "Of course, yeah, whatever you say. " We always try to be nice once we defeat 'em, you know, that's the American way. But Khrushchev asked for one more assurance from Kennedy. Then he said, "I want you to promise to keep hands off of Castro. " And Kennedy agreed. By that one... agreement that Kennedy made, created the longest-living dictator in the history of the world. Couple of things that we learned about the Cuban missile crisis later, we had no idea how dangerous and how close we came to a nuclear holocaustst the principle players in the crisis met and found out a startling fact. Americans involved in the Cuban missile crisis, and the Russians involved in the crisis met in Havana to have an open discussion about what really went on. And we were stunned at what Russians told us. They said, "We had authority, without communicating with Moscow, to launch those nuclear weapons against the United States, if we felt we were being attacked. " Despite the danger, the CIA had correctly guessed Soviet intentions and blocked what might have become a tipping point in the Cold War. From the earliest years of the CIA, the agency has always employed cutting-edge technology to succeed at its mission, giving it an advantage in the battle of wits against the Soviet Union. The high technology that came out of these early days, went on to become the most advanced technology the world had ever seen. Intelligence gathering and technology has gone hand in hand since the early days of espionage. Cryptology has always played a central role in America's intelligence gathering efforts. Cryptology is the practice and study of hiding information, and nowhere was this practice more valuable than in wartime. During World War II, British intelligence officers cracked German codes created on a machine called: allowing the Allies to intercept and read communications coming out of Axis Europe. Cryptology plays such an important role in keeping the CIA's secrets that there's a monument on the CIA campus in Virginia devoted to it. One with a puzzle that even the agency hasn't been able to solve. which was developed in 19... late 1980's, uh, wanted to, uh, to put works of art in the various public buildings and one of them was CIA, and a gentleman named Sanborn, uh, came up with the idea of a sculpture with a... with a cryptogram in it, and they hired him and he accessed the talent of uh, a then-recently retired cryptographer from CIA, who helped him develop the statue, and they developed, uh, a four part, uh, puzzle that... that's in the statue. Uh, subsequently, uh, a gentleman from CIA had studied it, uh, using uh, a hand, uh, you know, paper and pencil method, and indeed solved three of the four parts out of, I think it's 845 letters or so, uh, there are 97 which remain secret. And, uh, that's the challenge, uh, if anyone wants to take that challenge up, it's available. In the early decades of the Cold War, the United States made up for the lack of spies in the Soviet Union by using their technological advantage. An advantage called... Mounted wiwi advanced cameras, it gave the US knowledge of Soviet military strength, but it was capable of much more. We had onboard the U-2 more than cameras. We had signal intercept here, we could listen to the Russian communications, , as the plane flew over. We could tell when their fighters are trying to intercept it. They never could, but they were trying. We knew their missiles are being readied to launch, uh, against the airplane, which is flying around 70,000 feet. The U-2 was the first high altitude recon aircraft operated against the Soviet Union. It was used during the Cuban missile crisis and during overflights of Russia until one was shot down in May of 1960. But they finally, they finally got it in May Day 1960. But even before that, the CIA realized that they needed an airplane better, that could not only fly higher above the... what the missiles could fire, but it could outfly the missiles. The A-12 Oxcart was designed as the perfect spy plane, capable of flying out of the reach of Soviet missiles and even radar. However, there was a problem with the construction of the A-12, although the CIA had a plan. The US didn't have enough titanium to use to build the airplane, so the CIA set up a special operation, we actually bought the titanium, it was called titanium sponge, that's the raw form, from the Soviet Union, to build the plane that's going to spy on them. After purchasing some of the materials necessary to build the A-12 from the Soviet Union, the plane went on to find enormous success in discerning Soviet military intentions. The plane, uh, started test flying about '62. It went... went operational, uh, couple years after that, uh, and it flew operational missions ininhe late '60s. The A-12 program was cancelled on December 28th, 1966 to await the arrival Although visually almost identical to the A-12, it was run by the Air Force with a special mission. The Air Force had a unique mission and it was called... it was called post strike reconnaissance, meaning, if there is a nuclear war, you have to go fly right away over the... the damaged territory and see if you got all the targets, do you need to retarget anything you missed, the plane had to be a little sturdier and more rugged because flying in a... a post nuclear environment took a lot of buffeting, maybe. So they had to be a little stronger airplane. Although one difference was the addition of another pilot by the Air Force. They had two... two people in the airplane, a systems man and a pilot. Uh, we always tease the Air Force about this, they said, you know, "CIA planes are single seaeaea, we can do it all. Takes two Air Force people the... that get promoted to Colonel to fly theirs," but, uh, it's friendly... friendly bantering back and forth. With tools like the SR-71, U-2, and A-12, as well as advanced cryptology methods, the US had a decisive advantage in the Cold War, and in the late 80s, the Soviet Union was on the eve of collapsing. [music plays] Agents of the KGB and the CIA fought the battles of the Cold War, and Soviet KGB agents found that infiltrating American society was of little difficulty. They were so successful because we're such an easy, naive target. We're an open society. It's easy for them to spy in our country. We welcome everybody, we're a nation of immigrants, they say, spying in Russia, which is a closed society, is... is very difficult because they watch ya. It's a counter-intelligence state. Our spies were far superior to theirs because they had the tough job. When you're being watched 24 hours a day, their secrets, that's called skill. Despite the KGB's success at stealing secrets in the United States, the world was changing and the Soviet Union was on the brink of collapse. The Berlin wall fell, marking a symbolic end to a conflict that had held the world in the grip of fear for decades. Families and neighbors that had been separated in East and West Germany were reunited. German citizens came out of their homes and broke off pieces of the wall that had divided the world for so long. The Cold War ended in uh, in a whimper, rather than a wail. If we could just maintain our strength long enough, the Soviet Union had to collapse. As the, uh, the standoff continued in this Cold War, America was changing rapidly, and the Soviet Union was not. The Soviet Union had no economy. The Soviet Union was a third world country, but a first class military system of nuclear weapons. That's all it was. President Ronald Reagan had convinced the Soviet Union that the US was capable of defending itself against nuclear missiles with a project called SDI. called it Star Wars. You know, Star Wars was based on ability to counter their Soviet missiles, in other words, we now, we have, we've gone beyond mutually sure destruction. Each side can kill the other. We got one that can keep them from using their missiles at all. Now, Gorbachev is in real trouble. He can't get the technology wanted, it's not working, and now he's faced with this new threat and he made one attempt. He thought, "If you'll kill Star Wars, the Soviet Union will do almost anything if you'll do that. " And they met at Reykjavk, Iceland to discuss that treaty. Reagan said, "No,"," and Gorbachev was finished righghthere, he went home with nothing to show. And uh, that was, uh, the beginning of the actual collapse of the Soviet Union. As the Soviet Union collapsed, the CIA found itself without an obvious enemy for the first time in its history. But across the Atlantic, a new danger was growing. Followers of Islam were being turned to violence in certain areas of the Middle East, forcing the CIA to adapt once again. The intelligence commununy is changing drastically because the threats to our country During the Cold War, we faced formidable, powerful enemy, but they wore uniforms. They used conventional weapons. Uh, what we face today is far more serious threat. The intelligence community, as our first line of defense, has to bat a thousand. And all the terrorists have to do is get one over. And that's a 9/11. I think intelligence is always going to be a mixed success. There will be failures. It is the nature of intelligence in a number of cases to fail. The basic mission hasn't changed, but certainly the focus and approach, uh, has changed. And um, at the demise of the Soviet Union, uh, one gentleman, and I believe it was... it was Bob Gates, who is now Secretary of Defense, uh, was saying that, well, we no longer have to face the dragon, uh, but we face a wide number of venomous snakes. [music plays] On a wall in CIA Headquarters, rows of gold stars mark the deaths of CIA operatives fighting America's enemies abroad. Many of their names will never be known, and their families will never know the nature of their sacrifice because of the secrecy that must be upheld. There is a price to pay for signing up... to do this. You don't ever talk about... work at all with the family. And... and, and friends. It"s just not part of the... the background. You just don't mention it. It's like being in the Army in the wartime, except the war goes on all the time for you. You have to have your background checked thoroughly. Maybe back more than one generation. You have to have your finances scrutinized, your checkbook, your investments, and you're polygraphed over and over and over. If the US Congress was subjected to the same scrutiny that the CIA people are, there wouldn't be many people left over there. [music plays] |
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